Growers of livestock, in particular livestock intended for human consumption, have long sought ways of stimulating the growth of such livestock. For example, steroids such as diethylstilbestrol (DES) have been employed as feed additives in an effort to stimulate growth. As is now well known, the use of steroids has been implicated in the formation of certain tumors, and hence is undesirable. Another approach has been to add sugar (sucrose) to animal feeds to increase the palatability of the feed, and thereby induce the animal to increase its feed intake per unit time. However, the use of sugar materially increases the carbohydrate caloric content of the feed, and thus leads to increased fat formation in the animal.